Roomful of Blues 45th Anniversary! Otis and Carla from 1967!

Join us this week (3/15/14) as Time for the Blues celebrates Roomful of Blues' 45th anniversary as a band! Due to many requests, we're replaying this episode from last fall! Maybe that doesn’t impress the Rolling Stones, but it sure as heck impresses us! We’ll also check out sides from “King & Queen” by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas from the Stax studio in 1967! Be there or be...well, you get the point!

So John and I have been on long ride--7 years+ of bringing you Time for the Blues! Comparing that to 45 years as a working band for Roomful of Blues makes us feel like rookies! The starting group included great players like guitar-producer legend Duke Robillard and pianist Al Copley. Over the years this band has been home to Ronnie Earl and (one of our fave vocalists) Curtis Salgado among dozens of talented horn players! Long-time and current guitarist/songwriter Chris Vachon leads perhaps one of their best lineups including the silky smooth vocals of Phil Pemberton! There’s so much history to this band I won’t cover it here--read more on the link for Roomful of Blues!

45 Live is exactly that--a complete live set that celebrated their 45th Anniversary as a group, recorded in March 2013 and John and I feel it may be their best CD yet! Remember how much we loved 2011’s Hook, Line and Sinker? We must have played the whole CD over a number of shows! Well, this one is even better--we’ve teased you with a couple of tracks over the past few weeks and this week we'll throw some more at you! Check out the sample below!

Otis Redding and Carla Thomas only made one album together, but King and Queen from 1967 is one that should be in every blues/R&B lovers collection! With the talented Stax Staff (Booker T., Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Isaac Hayes and the Memphis Horns) this recording showcases the legendary (but left us too soon) Otis Redding actually sparring vocals with Stax’s reigning “Queen of Memphis Soul” Carla Thomas! Again, we gave you a taste of this in past weeks, but now we’ll give you some great treats from this classic, including their take on “Knock on Wood!”

But wait...there’s more! Recent tracks from Sugaray Rayford’s new release Dangerous and great acoustic slide from Kara Grainger’s most recent Shiver and Sigh! The more we hear from this disc, the more we’re impressed!

And for even MORE, we’ll also have another episode of The Goldwax Story! This is our 15th installment of Soul/R&B tracks from that little know Memphis label in the 1960's and even though we're hitting the bottom of the tape barrel, the sounds are fantastic. In the past we brought you astounding singers like James Carr, Spencer Wiggins and Barbara Perry--had they been on Atlantic of Motown, they’d have been household names! This week we’ll have two tracks from that legendary vocalist Unkown Artist! When retreiveing and remastering the original Goldwax tapes, the producers couldn’t find artist info on some of the tracks--but never mind who it was, you’ll love these formerly-lost sides!

So we still invite you to grab a nap, put on your jammies and stay up (not-so-late) with us! Time for the Blues with John Porter and Henry Cook airs Saturdays at 11:00 p.m.

Got a favorite blues artist you’d like us to feature on a future show? Let us know here and we’ll do right by you!